Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro - Jai Arjun Singh

Pages: 270
Price: 250
Published in: 2010
Publishers: Harper Collins- India



One often rues the lack of quality film writing in India, and in such a context, Jai Arjun Singh's debut non-fiction book on the 1983s cult classic, Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro is an earnest and thoroughly engaging read. For a while now, the 32 year old has been running an extremely popular blog, Jabberwock, where he pens down his lucid, well-thought out views on books and films. That apart, the author has been freelancing with various leading publications. Among other things, the writer's most admirable quality is his ability to elegantly guide his reader through the journey, gently but firmly interjecting and alerting through anecdotes, observations and counter points, without ever turning this into a self-indulgent, showy exercise.



It's obvious the author has deep reverence for the film, which is what prompted him to take up the endeavour. Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro has a lot of 'firsts' to make it interesting as a subject. It was possibly time a film was making a serous social commentary, through a comedy. Its credit roll remains one of the most extraordinary, with a striking list comprising of stalwarts who were all making a beginning of sorts with this unconventional film. Besides Naseeruddin Shah, who was the only well-off star among the cast and crew, there was a whole list of assistants and actors (doing bit roles), who went on to become famous with their subsequent works. There was Sudhir Mishra and Vidhu Vinod Chopra (both prominent directors today) who worked as assistants on Jaane Bhi... The actors included Satish Shah, Bhakti Barve, Pankaj Kapoor, Satish Kaushik, Anupam Kher (he played the role of an ineffective, funny goon called Disco Killer, but his part had to be edited out), Neena Gupta, Om Puri, Ravi Baswani - all of whom became part of this mad-cap film for different reasons.

The book, expectedly, is full of interesting anecdotes. It was fashionable then to criticise NFDC, the government body that provided funds for out-of-the-box, socially relevant films. But in the case of Jaane Bhi Do..NFDC played a hugely constructive role, not only ensuring that the film got made in the bold manner in which it was conceived but also hammering it on DD so that everyone ended up haeing it. It's also interesting to know that Naseeruddin Shah was not very happy with the way the film was shaping up. On more than one occasion, he would sulk, refusing to have his lunch when his objections were turned down by director Kundan Shah. The one refrain on the sets was the scarce and boring food, because of the low budget. The crew would have to frequently make do with vada pao and Sudhir Mishra still complains that it was 'that' film which gave him his acidity. But the passion and dedication from everyone was total, and each one completely submitted to the director's vision. In all this, the contribution of personalities like writer Ranjit Kapoor and editor Renu Saluja comes to the fore.

Jai Arjun is articulate, with not a word out of place.  He also knows how to keep the reader engaged through the 270 odd pages, small-sized book though it is. He does a thorough analysis of the film, makes objective, insightful observations, and gives us great conversational pieces with Kundan Shah (who even after all these years seems bemused and even somewhat irritated about all the overt fuss and intellectualism over Jaane Bhi Do...).
Certainly, more such endeavors on similar lines from other talented writers is more than welcome.

The Jaipur Jamboree

Jaipur Literature Festival that has steadily grown in popularity in the last six years and has come to become the definitive literary event in South-Asia, encountered an unexpected problem this year. What one thought to be an intimate, snug coming together of book lovers and illustrious authors at the quaint and beautiful Diggi Palace has ballooned into an uncontainable carnival with hordes of crowds pouring in from all over the city, country and beyond.



The 'free entry' to the event attracted the locals in fair measure too, with schools etc perhaps encouraging their students to benefit from the lit-fest. So the first impression was of the overflowing crowds that barely fitted into a venue meant for a few thousand. The gentle manners prescribed at these sort of events ensured that people didn't exactly push each other around, though there were of course times when ladies in impeccable designer arty ware elbowed their way to reach the kullar chais (tea in earthen pots) served at the venue. There was the public which had come 'just-like that' and did not adhere to the simple decorum of keeping their cell phones silent during sessions. But it would be fair to say that there was genuine curiosity and interest among the majority and it's heartening that the event has assuredly grown in stature (financially too, considering the number of major sponsors the event has attracted this year). But organisers William Dalrymple and Namita Gokhale would have to put on their thinking caps and try and find a way to balance the fest's inherent intellectual appeal without losing out on its democratic spirit. Solution? More festivals in other parts of the country, as Dalrymple has been suggesting? Possibly.

Not surprisingly, finding a chair became the biggest mission in the event, and most of us ended up sitting on the aisles listening to the speakers. The place was divided into four nearby venues within the Diggi Palace – all beautifully done up in different styles. Lines of colourful ribbon cloth spread across the ceilings, with the charming sight of a Victorian style fountain amidst roses. There were prettily decked up stalls – selling artifacts, finely binded classics. Then of course, there were the food stalls, selling muffins and pastries in the lawns, which we could relish only on the last day when the crowds had finally thinned out.

Coming to the centre piece of this event – the numerous sessions with wonderful writers spread across the five days – was invigorating, though the one hour time proved to be slightly inadequate at times, especially in sessions where more than a couple of writers took part. So what you got were snippets of ideas, rather than any elaborate exposition of the themes.
There was also the session with Gulzar, Akthar and Prasoon Joshi on 'Hindi songs' that saw a near stampede, and seeing the audience interest, the session was repeated at lunch time the same day.



The other sessions involving authors like Patrick French (in conversation with Amitava Kumar), Chimananda Adichi, Kiran Desai, Ruskin Bond, Vikram Seth, Orphan Pamuk and Mohsin Hamid were the other highlights of the event.
A great festival for India for sure, with a lot of international interest in it. As one expects from an event such as this, the fashion quotient was unusually high, which mildly distracted from what is really supposed to be an intellectual and creative meeting-point for people. A word about the Rajasthani food served. Absolutely lip-smacking and delicious. That made sure we wouldn't leave with a bad taste in the mouth even if the dust and noisy crowd was a serious turn off.


Javed Akhtar and Urdu zubaan

Javed Akhtar was one of the show stealers at the event, as he spoke on 'Urdu Zabaan' , its evolution and its current state. “It's a paradox that people who talk and write in Urdu have reduced, and yet, those curious and fascinated about this language have increased.”
On how Urdu came into being, the celebrated screenwriter and lyricist says, “Basically, Urdu borrowed from other languages, especially Persian. But it was molded in the local flavour” Explaining this, he says, “You see, 'hawa' is a Persian word but 'hawayein' is Urdu. Again, 'amir' is taken from Arabic, but 'amiron ne' or 'amiri' is Urdu's own invention."
He also spoke about how Urdu has been unfairly viewed as an Islamic language. “While most of the poetry that originated in other languages started as religious poetry that transcended to other themes, Urdu poetry was secular and anti-fundamentalist from day one. The fight between Aurangazeb and Shivaji was never about religion. Neither was the one between Akbar and Maharana Pratab about Hindu-Muslim. These were territorial battles, not on religious lines. In any case, how can a religion have a language? Zabaan illakon ki hoti hai,” he says eloquently. “People sadly accepted that Urdu belonged to Pakistan and the baby was thrown with the bath water,” he adds.
He also talked about how the common perception about Urdu is that it circulates between lowest-common denominator words like 'sharaab' and 'mehboob' “But the language actually encompasses everything from Indian politics to weather to traditional festivals to myths and folk.”
Stressing more on the liberal and non-religious appeal of Urdu, and how it was a victim of political agenda, he says, “During the progressive writers' movement (pro-poor with leftist leanings), every major Urdu writer was at the forefront of it. But after Indian independence in 1947, Urdu became the step-child of the establishment. How do you destroy a language? You do it by simply destroying its economic utility. That's what they did.”
Since much of our knowledge of Urdu comes from watching Mughal dramas such as Jodhaa Akbar etc, Akhtar had some interesting observations to make on this. “Akbar never spoke Urdu at all. He wore a lungi and spoke what was a mix of Punjabi, and other Hindi dialects such as Avadhi and Kathyavadi,” Akhtar said, imitating how Akbar might have sounded. “Only when the Mughals started to disintegrate, did Urdu begin to emerge. It is with the coming of the British that the language got more recogonition,” he says.
Even if one were to think that Urdu is almost dead in India, Akhtar believes the language lives through Bollywood songs. “It is alive in our songs and dialogues even if it is called Hindi cinema.”

Junot Diaz – Story-teller in chief

Another extremely provocative session was that with Pulitzer Prize winning author Junot Diaz with his bold, unconventional views on writing and reading. He points out how as a society we need less applause and more conversation to create something new and of value. “Society wants you to to seek its approval, and in such an atmosphere there isn't much scope to develop an artistic temperament,” he notes. “Do the monkey dance so we can clap for you' “As an artiste, you need to go into bizarre areas knowing people may not like it. You have to fight approval of others.”
One of the aspects readers find in his novels is that all of it is not easily intelligible, but Junot says he deliberately puts in words in his text knowing people may not understand. “Reading is not a test. You read because it duplicates the experience of being out in the world. You don't have to understand everything. Unintelligibility is just a natural part of a novel. It is an invitation for you to form a community, by asking around for those words.” he said, adding, “As a child you take help to understand a text. But as you grow older you eschew that ability.'
About his own writing, he says he's a slow writer and doesn't produce much. And he notes how much of what seems to be natural writing, an organic rhythm is actually a deeply artificial one. “It never comes at the first go. What you write instantly is actually more stilted and staged that what you produce after many re-writings. To sound real involves a laboured, long and artificial craft.” he says.

'Aisi Hindi Kaisi Hindi'



The session which included Mrinal Pande, Prasoon Joshi and Sudeesh Pachori spoke about the threat to Hindi from English and how the language needs to update itself somewhat to keep up with the times. Mrinal Pandey speaking about her distaste for abuses in the Hindi language said, “An increase in abuses demonstrates an impoverishment of the language and limitation of vocabulary. I think the effect of a gaali can be created using civil language,” she smiled, giving a few piquant examples. “Lastly, a lot of these words are plain objectionable to women.”
However, she also noted how there are no words related to sex in Hindi, and many women, especially struggle to explain their problems. “This is true about some of the other regional tongues also. This could be one of the reasons for more gaalis in the absence of proper words for certain body parts. We need to make new dictionaries, so that gaalis can be erased from our discourse,” she said.

Kiran Desai and the inheritance of books



Anita Desai was nominated for the Man Booker Prize three times, but it was her daughter Kiran Desai who bagged it for her book, The Inheritance of Loss. Having left for America as a child, Kiran in her conversation with Jai Arjun Singh spoke about her lack of rootedness and the difficulties that arose in her writing as a result of that. “I was fighting for an in-between place, cause I didn't belong to neither India nor America. When I left India I knew my life had changed and I would never be able to think about India in the same way again.”
Talking about the influence of her mother, she says, “My mother is deeply an author. - the way she talks, her silences, the way she sits...she is every bit an author. As a child I used to see a young Amitav Ghosh, Salman Rushdie coming to meet her at home. For the longest time, my mother kept her writing a secret. She used to pack us off to school and then bring out her pad to write so we never actually knew her as a writer. We would directly see her finished books.”
Kiran enrolled in a creative writing workshop to hone her own skills, an endeavour which didn't entirely work for her. “Everyone at that time used to laugh at these writing workshops. Gradually some writers came who were writing workshop products and suddenly you couldn't laugh at them anymore. They taught me discipline. Also, if you're lucky you will meet a good teacher who can guide you well. But these workshops can also destroy your confidence because what you write will not appeal to everyone. You are looking at group approval, a pack mentality, where so and so is offended by something you write, so and so doesn't get this joke, and by the end of it, there is no novel left.”
One of the biggest challenges Kiran says she faces is because she does not have an authority on the settings in her novels. “When an author writes for a constricting narrative, he is able to get in a great amount of depth and intimacy. I see a lot more imagination in their characters. I am jealous of that. I, on the other hand, am conscious of not knowing anything completely about any place – just fragmented worlds. I have to jigsaw a lot of things.”
“Running out of stories is never my concern, but how to tell them is always my concern. Otherwise the world is always over-flowing with stories. I never have a particular audience in mind. I am moving so much,” she says.

Muniza and Kamila Shamsie – Two nations, Two narratives

The mother-daughter writer team of Muniza and Kamila Shamzie discussed the themes that have run generationally in Pakistani writing, and what aspects influence their works. Attia Hosein's 1961 novel, Sunlight On A Broken Column was also invoked during the talk. Muniza spoke about how the partition was very much part of her life. “ I had all kinds of cultural conflicts. I was very aware of partition. My earliest memory goes back to when I was 3. I remember the sight of Karachi and my father waiting to receive us. And I grew up with this discourse of partition – people kept discussing it – why did it happen etc. so I was conscious about my family with a past. The Indian side of my family couldn't see eye to eye with us and they raved and ranted at my father.”

Interestingly, in all their novels, the personal and the political have merged. “Novels look at the greys, there's the realm of the imagination. The national narratives do not contain that. Novels show you new dimensions, present things anew.”
Kamila expressed that the Indo-Pak partition is very interesting to her dramatically. “But I belong to the Zia generation, so writers like me tend to look more at Aghanistan, Jehad mentality and so on. These are the themes that are more prevalent in the novels of the younger Pakistani writers,” she says.
The one challenge before younger Pakistani novelists with elite education is to somehow find a way to include the Urdu idiom into English. “Ahmed Ali consciously tried to get the Persian Urdu idiom and got criticised for it, because the language many felt was stilted. Much like how it was with Mulk Raj Anand in India.” Kamila says, adding that she is most comfortable in English and Urdu is her second language. “There is no issue about it. I think in English, I dream in English. You write in the language you are most comfortable in and if by the force of your education you can do better in English, then one must write in that language.”
The fact that everyone these days is bilingual has greatly helped writers. “ Earlier you didn't have an audience if you wanted to write in a bilingual language. Today most of the young gen of writers are doing it. The market is English today. Certain phrases come out better in the regional languages and a way has to be found out. For me finding that way around is part of the pleasure,” she says.

Imaginary homelands



This session looked at diaspora writers and the constant debate on whether their fiction is pure enough to represent their countries. Junot Diaz and Kamila Shamsie among others were part of this debate that was anchored by writer Chandrahas Choudhury. “Nations are obsessed with purity, when really none of us are all pure,” said Junot. “We live in a world that is churning. People who travel are not just the global elite. Everyone is moving around. Writers read a lot so they are part of many imaginary worlds,” said Shamsie, adding. “ You cannot have all your stories based on your own experiences, then there would be no fiction.”

Mohsin Hamid

Mohsin Hamid's morning session on the last day of the festival with Chandrahas Choudhury was an immensely enjoyable one, where the author threw light on his celebrated novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist and his craft. The Pakistani writer who has been living in America for the past many years wrote an earlier novel called Moth Smoke, which also gained a fair amount of acclaim. But it was The Reluctant Fundamentalist set in the backdrop of 9/11 that made Mohsin famous.
Unlike popular assumption, the novel's first draft was not written after 9/11, but much before that. " I wrote it in 2000, and at that point the publisher wasn't too interested. A story about a Muslim man having an uneasy relationship with America was not something that captured anyone's imagination. But after 2001, it was like, 'That book you are working on...' he narrates to an amused audience on the demand and relevance the subject suddenly acquired.

Mohsin had to make certain changes to his original draft after 9/11. " Earlier I had modelled it like a thriller, something like John Grisham's The Firm. But after 9/11, I had to subvert many things," he tells us.

Ask him about his excessive use of commas in his text, and the young writer says, "I've never really understood punctuations. For me punctuations are like spellings - you don't know why a word is spelt the way it is. My purpose for using commas and semi colons is only one - to give cadence to words. Colon is a connecting pause, a comma is just a rhythmic break. It's more a musical notation than a grammatical notation. The basic point for me is cadence, because we speak and think with cadences. There is a magical feeling to that rhythm. I try to achieve that, where I get the reader to slip into a certain rhythm, where you are already moving. An emotional state is thereby achieved."

Like many other writers, Mohsin too believes that fiction is not a spontaneous art at all. "All writers are readers. I read my stuff hundreds of times. it's a continuous act of evolution and refinement," he says.

Jimmy the terrorist - Omair Ahmad's interview

Author: Omair Ahmad
Pages: 180

It's easy to read author Omair Ahmad's new book, Jimmy The Terrorist, as a partisan novel about mariginalistion of the Muslim community in India, their victimisation and all the issues that come with it. But Ahmad is staunchly against such narrow readings. The book is set in the fictional town of Maozamabad in Muslim-dominated colony in UP, and follows closely the life of a few of its denizens, against the changing socio-political atmosphere in the country. In establishing the history of the people of the town, the author briefly touches upon the antecedents, following which the drama begins from the 60s where you enter the life of an ordinary Muslim youth, Rafiq who aspires to be a well-educated elite. The old Shabbir Manzil, which houses affluent Muslim families and is the intellectual hub for poets, is where Rafiq aspires to be. He finally becomes privy to this much envied circle by way of his marriage to Shiasta -- the well-educated cousin of the affluent Ahmad Sayeed. However, other complications come along. The Rafiq-Shiasta union produces a son, Jamal aka Jimmy, and it is in his young life that you see the undercurrents of religious intolerance taking its ugliest turn.
The novel undoubtedly points at the vulnerable, fragile situation of Muslims in India, even though Omair is enough of a writer to add touches of irony (the Muslim characters show a tendency to feel victimised for everything, often ignoring their personal failings.)

Taking Omair Ahmad's point that his book is primarily a personal, human story and must not be seen as religion-specific, it could be pointed out that there are some jumps in the narration that aren't altogether convincing. The Rafiq-Shiasta relationship is a complex one, but never really clear. Nor is Rafiq's slow hardening of his Muslim identity. Whether these things are allegorical or so not is besides the point - purely as a story, there seem to be a few gaps.



Ahmad's book started as a short story of 4000 words, which ultimately got transformed into a novel. "I was in the US at that time, and was trying to explain to colleagues in think tanks (this is the time of Godhra, the Parliament attack, just after September 11, after Afghanistan and just around the time of Iraq) the costs of violence, and the breakdown of law and order on young people, especially in the context of religious politics. In a sense although this is set in a Muslim locality, I believe that it should generally work in the context of any minority facing majoritarian politics -- think of Kashmiri Pandits, of Ahmadiya in Pakistan & Bangladesh...," says the author whose earlier novella, The Storyteller's Tale came in for much praise.

"The novel was because of a nudge by Ravi Singh (at Penguin), and also maybe as I got older I have become less interested in the violence, and more interested in the larger society, about ideas of social mobility, the problems of small town societies... So the novel is frankly about very different things than the short story."

Though the novel concerns itself with a particular Muslim locality and simultaneously traces the country and community's trajectory through prickly religious events, Ahmad clearly states that he is not trying to 'represent' the Indian Muslim community. "I don't think that is the choice, or job, of a writer. The essential question are: "why would somebody do this thing? what are the circumstances necessary? does it make sense?" The only job a writer has to try to search for some kind of truth and make it a little clearer -- to share his or her understanding... The partial drive in the book is to understand how complicated people really are, how a story has not just two, or three, or even
four perspectives, but more than any one person can adequately capture. We just get a bare outline of all of that.," says the author, who has worked as a political journalist with Outlook.

The book decidedly appears mostly allegorical, where each character mirrors some facet of society. But Omair's answer suggests there was no strict pattern to the narrative, and many characters in the novel simply behave the way they do because of the kind of people they are. "I hope that not everything is simply representational. Shabbir Manzil, and Ahmad Saeed, are obviously characteristic of a declining aristocratic, educated elite, but the fact that Ahmad Saeed likes the poetry he does, or how he deals with the failure in the UPSC exams is something of his own character, that of an imagined person,not simply a code word for something else. Similarly Shaista passion, her bitterness, is who she is." he says, adding wryly, "If I may say so, I am not Dan Brown (for one, my books don't sell
millions of copies!) and I am not writing puzzles for people to solve,
but trying to understand why people might act the way they do."

Omair's idea for the novel began with one thought - what would be a Muslim youth's mind-set amidst events of religious intolerance and unrest? But this situation is hardly unique to India alone, and several Muslims will admit that their sense of marginalisation is far greater in other countries. The story based in a small town in UP can easily translate into being a microcosm for Indian religious conflicts and further a microcosm for Muslim victimisation. It's a subtext hard to escape, but Omair insists on seeing the story as a purely human one. "The only uniqueness for me about the Indian experience is that it is mine. When I write about eastern UP, about the failure of our agriculture policies, about the crumbling of our infrastructure, our hope in a vision of 'modernity' that we may not be able to fully
achieve, I write about people and places I know." he says.

Rediscovering Austen

Jane Austen (Tony Tanner) case study

They say, 'one half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other'. That rightly applies to Jane Austen, who probably has as many die-hard admirers as skeptics. Her enduring popularity continues to bewilder a section of authors and literary critics who find her novels and concerns too remote and limited to be taken seriously. Her growing fame mystified her contemporaries like Charlotte Bronte and Mark Twain who repeatedly wondered aloud what all the fuss around her was. Many derisively said that if you had read one Austen novel, it was as good as reading all of them.



Austen's popularity in the critical sphere has gone through periods of ups and lows, but her appeal among regular readers has never shown the slightest signs of a decline. Austen's constricted, over-decorous society of the 18th century might seem a bit ludicrous to modern readers. But the prim liveliness in her stories, the sparking wit and characters edged with delicious irony have enthralled generations of readers, and the charm and appeal of her works remain undiminished.
More importantly, even though she based all her stories in a certain class of English gentry and dealt primarily with themes of domesticity and marriagablity, it was still a legitimate microcosm of the larger society and for an acute reader, these are stories that offer much insight about the times Austen lived in. Of course, her enduring popularity remains a fascinating subject for research, and many of her critic-admirers have done penetrating studies on Austen's world, trying to reassert her genius.

One of the case study books on Jane Austen I perused recently was by critic Tony Tanner, who provides a provocative though stimulating study of her novels. Some of Tanner's focus is on disproving through analysis of her novels that Austen was not the sequestered spinster with scant knowledge of the outside world, as she was believed to be. All his seven essays - each dedicated to one novel are illuminating and unfurl a world of meanings, pointing to the larger themes and subtexts present in Austen’s narrative choices.

The period Austen wrote was one where great changes were taking place. Politically, England was engaging in a war with Napoleon Bonaparte. The Romantic movement was challenging the Age of Reason, where many of the old ways was being considered too priggish and stifling. Jane Austen grew up on eighteenth century rationalism and was loyal to its principles that honoured limits and boundaries. She was respectful of social systems and old values, and laid a lot of emphasis on sense and prudence. In fact, she was also particular about manners, class, and propriety in her earlier novels. But this last aspect changes once we come to her last novel, Persuasion, as Tony Tanner’s critique brings out.



Tanner’s book points at a certain recurrent theme in Austen’s novels that most of her readers might have detected already – the struggle between ‘stillness’ and ‘energy’ – sense v/s sensibility, prudence v/s impulse and sobriety v/s indulgence. The only heroine in whom we see a congruence of reason and energy is Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. Her spirit, wit and liveliness are seen to be a source of great delight in an otherwise dull and inferior society. Tanner rightly thinks that this happy coming together of pragmatism with a fairy tale touch of romance in Pride and Prejudice is what offers the novel its unfading relevance. However, this vibrancy is not found in Austen’s other works and the analysis points at how she grew skeptical about too much effervescence and energy. Austen’s fear of ‘unfettered movement’ and ‘openness’ was evident in Sense and Sensibility, where she creates a romantic figure in the form of Marianne, who she treats with ‘an ambiguous mix of sympathy and satire’

The larger issue Austen deals with is that of individual impulse and social order. The elder sister, Elinor is a preserver of ‘screens’ in that it she ‘who is constantly trying to smooth and harmonise potentially abrasive and discordant occasions, giving the raw social realities a vaneer of art’. Marianne is the opposite and ‘demands that outward forms exactly portray or project inward forms’. She will have none of the hypocrisy and will speak her mind at all times. But Austen sees the impossibility of this situation, where if everyone were to behave according to their own whims and impulses – then there would be no society at all, and only anarchy.



Sense And Sensibility was Austen’s first novel and Tanner speaks of how it is largely considered the author’s weakest novels due to the ‘crude antithesis’ in the schematic separation of qualities of both sisters. This is done for greater clarity, but critics found it primitive and much similar to the moralistic fiction of the past age. Yet, Tanner believes and I wholeheartedly agree that things are never black and white in the novel, and Austen’s sympathies lie with both Elinor and Marriane. Tanner expresses his disappointment with the novel’s brusque ending, where Marriane is ‘tamed’ after her sickness and marries a man she had never fancied earlier. What can be said here is that Austen – though sympathetic about romance and individual choices – is a far greater advocate of reason. Since society was the ‘unalterable given’ to her, she believed her characters had to negotiate within those spaces and find happiness.

While Austen’s tenor was more light –hearted in Pride and Prejudice, it grew positively severe in her third novel, Mansfield Park. It was a time when new cities were coming up, and London was emerging as a fashion centre. Austen knew the quiet life of the country-side, which she loved, would sooner than later feel the ripples of this change. “Jane Austen, then, was living in a diminishing enclave of traditional rural stability just prior to a period of convulsive, uncontrollable change,” writers Tanner. So while the theme of energy versus stillness continues in Mansfield Park, the novel is also about ‘rest and restlessness, stability and change and movable and immovable’.

It is also probably Austen’s most metaphorical works, and she creates at the centre a heroine – Fanny Price – whom most readers have had a dislike for. Unlike her other heroines, Fanny is staid, still and faultless. ‘It is regarded as the story of a girl who triumphs by doing nothing’. Against Fanny’s stoicism and moral rectitude, she juxtaposes a shifting world, and inhabits it with ebullient, exciting characters. The two ‘outsider’ brother-sister team, Mary and Henry Crawford are products of the stylish London society. Outwardly, they are charming, witty and jolly people. Austen places at the centre of the novel a theatrical performance that is staged by the denizens of the Mansfield Park mansion. It is done when the patriarch guardian of the house, Sir Thomas is away. Such a practice is not encouraged here where everything is orderly and as per convention. Putting up a play per se, is not a crime – Tanner points out. It is the underlining meaning of the act that Austen uses. The masks, the stage, the darkness, the role-playing foster an atmosphere of illicit affairs and dubious activity- turning a ‘temple of order’ into a ‘school for scandal’ so to say. It is this corruption of character and corrosive impact on society that Austen brings out. And to drive home her point, she shows the manipulative, mercenary and utterly superficial nature of the Crawfords.



For all of Austen’s conservatism, one of the other aspects that emerges in her novels is her slow disenchantment with society itself. Even while she treats her society as a given, almost immovable (Mansfied Park) against external forces, it was hardly as if she couldn’t detect the evil elements and developing cracks from within. It’s not surprising then that Elizabeth Bennet once she finds an equal companion in Darcy retires to the wonderful estate of Pemberley – away from a certain kind of society that both of them dislike. In Mansfield Park also Austen distinctly points out the corrupting influences and the rot within. However, her belief in her society appears total at this point, and she restores its place of pride, by making someone like Fanny Price the mistress of Mansfield Park.

Austen, however, could also see the limitations of this world and unfairness to women. Emma’s dangerous fetish for match-making is precisely born out of her lack of proper employment. “In Emma’s society, there is no room for manoeuvre, no room for rearrangement, no room for any kind of escape. In short, there is no room…it explains a lot about Emma’s spirited imagination, which is constantly unfixing and refixing things in a most irresponsible way,” writes Tanner. (Here too, Austen’s partiality to ‘sense’ over ‘sensibility’ is evident. Emma’s flightiness and frivolity is juxtaposed against the quiet confidence and wisdom of a Jane Fairfax and Knightley.)

But Tanner believes it is Austen’s last fully published novel, Persuasion which shows so clearly her disillusionment with her society. The theme of prudence v/s impulse continues here too, and Austen does not change her side. She still emphasizes the virtues of stillness over rash movement. This of course alludes to Louisa who in her impulsiveness has a dangerous ‘fall’ – but the author also distinctly becomes softer about matters of the heart. Anne – the quiet, useful heroine of the novel – is ‘persuaded’ by her governess Mrs Russell in good faith to give up her lover Wentworth since he isn’t well-settled enough. Seven years have passed and Anne is still single, and greatly regrets turning down the one man she so desperately loved. Wentworth is now a Captain in the Navy, and doing very well for himself. Many themes unfurl themselves in this setting. Firstly Tanner believes, and this is a clearly emerging picture, that many of the old authorities are now defunct. The society itself is growing increasingly moribund and stagnant. This is evident in the way Austen portrays Anne’s father, as a man given to excess and someone perfectly useless. Similarly Mrs Russell’s advice about Wentworth turns out to be dead wrong, demonstrating clearly that many of the old criterias for judging have become invalid. But the most damning indictment of her society comes from the fact that Austen now sees an alternative set of values and way of life in the Navy. Austen could see that the land-owning elite in England did nothing during the war and it was the Navy which saved the country. She is very appreciative of them in the book, admiring their openness and their sense of gender equality. I didn’t notice it till Tanner points out in the book that perhaps for the first time Austen has written very lyrically about the sea in Persuasion. The end sees Anne moving away from her own society -there isn’t any left ! – and joins Wentworth on the sea. This is a big departure in an Austen novel.

Besides the larger themes that emerge from Tanner’s critique, intermittently, there are also some exquisite readings he makes of certain scenes. Like the one in Pride And Prejudice, where Elizabeth Bennet joins her uncle and aunt to visit Pemberley. It is the most memorable and significant scenes in the novel. Elizabeth’s heart has already softened towards Darcy after his letters, and this entry into his grand mansion is also a metaphorical opening into what she will now see as the real Darcy. Tanner points out how the truest portrait of Darcy in the most private part of the house upstairs; downstairs he is only visible in ‘miniature’ - this implies that the further a man moves away from his house, the most chances there are that he can be misrepresented. “Standing before the large and true image of the real Darcy, Elizabeth has in effect completed her journey.”

Some of Tanner’s observations are speculative, but still there’s a great deal of originality and insight in his readings. And indeed this prompts the reader to think anew about Austen. Certainly her 'small world' had more things going on that one would imagine. And Tanner brings that aspect forth.

Why Mythology lives on

Mythology has always been a fascinating treasure for our filmmakers to delve into. What’s the lasting appeal of our epics, will mythology be relevant to our cinema in the future, too?



With Raajneeti and Raavan this year — films that are adapted from our great epics, Mahabharata and Ramayana respectively — one would think there’s a certain revival of interest in mythological themes. However, fact is that Indian cinema has always drawn from the deep well of these influential epics. Every character and story within these epics have been so entrenched in our psyche and collective consciousness, that they have invariably come to determine our ideas of culture and morality. And the fact that our epics are such a compelling artistic and creative tour de force have made them timeless in their appeal and relevance. Not to add, they remain the ultimate source material for our arts, especially cinema.

Straight from epics

Naturally then, when Indian cinema took its first baby steps, it was mythological subjects that became the obvious choices for filmmakers. Dadasaheb Phalke’s most well-known films included Mohini Bhasmasur (1913), Satyavan Savitri (1914), Lanka Dahan (1917), Shri Krishna Janma (1918) and Kaliya Mardan (1919) — all derived from our great epics. And this was the trend across the country, with almost every film made down South, through the ’30s being a mythological one — Sakkubai, Sita Vanavasam, Krishna Tulabharam in Tamil cinema, to name just a few. These were all straight-forward representations of the epic tales and the fact that the audience were well-versed with the stories allowed them to make an immediate connection with the films. Hence, the transition to cinema proved to be an easy and pleasant one, where the content was familiar, even if the medium was a new one.
“Indians have a deep connect with their mythological texts. It’s an umbilical cord,” says writer and director Vinay Shukla. “There are so many strands in the Mahabharata that a filmmaker can base every story on the epic if he wanted, and yet never run out of material.”

The myth continues



With time, as cinema started evolving, filmmakers began experimenting with their stories, making it more contemporary. However, they seldom moved away from the templates and archetypes created by mythology. So the hero was mostly a representation of the ideal man Ram or the manipulative Krishna. The inspiration for the heroine came directly from the image of Ram’s dutiful wife, Sita — an embodiment of purity, compassion and sacrifice.
Even in the ’70s, when the anti-establishment wave took over, and youths were disenchanted with the old ‘ideals’, people got a new anti-hero after their own heart. Amitabh Bachchan’s characters in Trishul and Deewar, the illegitimate son and the underdog respectively, can easily be compared to that of Karna in Mahabharata, the illegitimate son of Kunti, who rebels and succeeds against all odds. Not only was such a character completely resonant with the mood of the nation, it also fired the imagination like none other. “Everyone has fantasies of being this abandoned child. It’s a universal fantasy, which is why Karna’s situation strikes such a deep chord,” says Anjum Rajabali, writer of films like Raajneeti, The Legend Of Bhagat Singh and Ghulam. “The don and his loyal henchman seen in countless films invariably draw their energy from the Ram and Hanuman relationship. Similarly, all our old villains have the same motivation that drove Raavan. It was revenge and lust. So he abducts the heroine to teach the hero a lesson and eventually falls in love/lust with her.”

A timeless treasure trove

“I have no doubt that our mythology is timeless in essence. Our epics are an external and dramatic representation of an inner life. Since human nature does not change, our epics will remain as compelling and influential as ever,” says Rajabali.
Almost everyone agrees that mythology has a treasure trove of stories and if they are are well-woven into contemporary settings, they will always find a resonance. “I would recommend every student and filmmaker to read the epics to simply understand how to tell stories and what these stories actually reveal. It helps one to see the entire range of depths and the layering of characters. They are simple, but never simplistic. For example, take the episode of Hanuman entering Lanka to retrieve Sita. Here is a man who is completely devoted to Ram and yet when he enters Raavan’s palace, he is struck by his glory and exclaims, ‘this man is fit to rule this world!’ This is the conflict which even Valmiki mentions in the original Ramayan. So our epics keep throwing cues at us, telling us not to look at things in a very simple way,” views Rajabali.
In spite of other narrative influences coming in, filmmakers believe that mythology can still be a great source of stories for films. “Mani Ratnam’s Roja is actually a simple tale of Savitri wanting her husband’s life back from Yama. And Mani does it very cleverly, so that the reference is never overt. I think South Indians perhaps have an advantage because mythology is very deeply ingrained in them. They can easily take the emotions from the epic stories and present them in the modern context,” says Shukla.
Rajabali too agrees that a lot more of mythology can flow into our films. “Unfortunately, the literary aspect of our films has not been explored enough. You need a literary tradition. Our earlier writers were all authors. Today, we don’t see that,” he says.

Mythology, a gimmick?

Author of several mythological books, Devdutt Patanaik believes our films, which directly try to adapt the epics or borrow recognisable elements from them, present very primitive versions. “They are cosmetically fantastic and alluring, but their soul is missing. They present to you a cosmetic archetype. So any person who is manipulative is Krishna, but then what about Shakuni? Earlier scholars who researched the Mahabharata and Ramayan tried to explore and impart the wisdom in it. That is not the intention of the films that one sees. Most of them only play with popular perception. They will glamourise the villain (Raavan) because the dark side is always interesting. But I doubt it is done with any understanding of the story. So I will say, they are great cosmetically, but on the soul level, there is a complete disconnect. A good katha should shake you up from your complacency and uplift you. Do you see that happening with any of these films?,” he asks.
Rajabali has a contrary view and argues, “I don’t see anything uplifting about Ramayana and Mahabharata. In fact, these epics make me ponderous and reflective. Both these texts end in tragedy. In Ramayana, you see Ram being the best king and having the ideal kingdom and yet, his life ends in pain. It is a way of telling us how life is very difficult and is ultimately very painful.”

The future of mythology

Since epics are living texts, the understanding is that they can be re-interpreted in a million ways, and they will still find a resonance among the future generations. Ultimately, whether one sees our epics as cautionary tales or inspirational parables, it is evident that their greatness lies in their narrative craftsmanship, emotional depth, and profound understanding of the human nature, something which every artiste can take inspiration from.
William Dalrymple’s Nine Lives sums it up best in a chapter about the Pabuji epic in Rajasthan and oral traditions, when he says. “Myths pick up the pieces when philosophy throws up its hands. Great myths help to think through the unthinkable and make sense by analogy.”

Women Unbound, Leading Ladies - Writing on women by women and interview with Sudha Menon

It's not hard to see that women are increasingly dotting the professional arena, and even dominating the scene in specific industries. Every subsequent day is seeing their number rise at the work place, and in a few years, women are tipped to take over plum positions in all fields, including those that have been traditionally viewed to be male bastions. This changing gender dynamics on the work-front will unquestionably alter and challenge the working space in the years to come. Which is why, the timing of two recent books, Women Unbound (Penguin) by Gita Aravamudan and Leading Ladies (42 Bookz Galazy) by Sudha Menon couldn't have been better. Both expectedly 'celebrate women' and acknowledge the rapid strides they are making in their professions, and how this is impacting family and social life. Admirably, both books focus intently on the professional journey and achievements of women, not allowing their personalities to be overly defined by their private lives.


While Aravamudan focusses on the whole class of working women trying to gather an aggregate of how things stand today, Sudha Menon’s book, Leading Ladies profiles the country’s long-standing women achievers, seeing what makes them tick.

Both books have been penned by ex journalists. While Sudha I recogonise as a sassy journalist on the Pune reporting scene, Aravamudan has also worked as a journo in Bangalore. Both women take a mature and balanced approach towards the topic, trying to understand the role of women today and the realms of the possible. However like it happens often with print journalists who turn to non-fiction, the writing assumes an impersonal, third-person staidness. From time to time both of these give you the feeling of reading a newspaper cover story or magazine with the ‘he says’ ‘she says’ approach. Their authorial voice is a timid one having for years seen things from a generalized, neutral stand point. This is a disadvantage because non-fiction frequently relies on effervescent writing to offset the seriousness brought about by the theme at hand.
Both books  run out of steam after making a few points and then get  terribly repetitive.

Gita Aravamudan’s Women Unbound has interviews with women across the board - media personalities, IT professionals, BPO employees and one even with item girl Rakhi Sawant. There is novelty in the first few chapters as the author gives an introduction about the history of the ‘working women’ and tracing how and when things started changing. Some of the women she interviews are interesting. Like there’s one with NDTV journo Radhika Bordia and her reporting on hard news. Radhika rules out being differentiated on account of gender and says those days are long over. Yet, women are not singularly judged on their capabilities still. She notes how women on television have an advantage if they look good. This was something Radhika had to reluctantly come to terms with. “The visual media has become like the film industry. The male anchors are getting older, and the women are getting younger. But it’s not just the TV industry. It’s everywhere. All career women feel the pressure to look good."
There are some observations that stay with you. Like the author finds how even though women are found in plenty at the entry level of an organization, their number drastically reduces in the middle management level – this is because most women tend to take a break after marriage or pregnancy and find it difficult to get back into the groove. Working around the family and yet the same time having a full fledged career remains the single most important challenge before women. What the book brings out, however, is that many women are fiercely dedicated towards their work and given the right support system can really do wonders.
But the idea of a woman being defined by her professional life and career will only happen with time. In the book Gita narrates how many bosses at the time of recession were tilted in favour of  their male employees and when left with little option laid off the women, citing that men needed their jobs for their families. Obviously having a job may still not be viewed as a necessary part of a woman’s identity. But it’s very clear that the winds of change are blowing fast.
The book tries to cover just about every working woman it can find, so it feels like a great amount is crammed in. It gets repetitive and the only way one will not mind it so much is if one doesn’t read it at stretch.

The same condition needs to be applied to Sudha Menon’s book, Leading Ladies as well because the pattern in each story starts to get familiar and tedious. The book looks closely at the lives of well-known personalities like Anu Agha, Naina Kidwai, Lila Poonawala, Mallika Sarabhai. There are other leading business women and CEOs like Shikha Sharma, Kiran Muzumdar, Priya Paul and Amrita Patel that the book covers. Many of them have been extensively written about and quoted in the press, so straight away, the subject loses some of its novelty. 
Anu Agha is terrific and inspirational as ever as she reflects on her life where she suffered the worst knocks possible, including the death of her young son in an accident soon after the death of her husband. The tragedies made her philosophical, but not bitter, and she picked herself up in the larger interest of her company, Thermax. Today, Anu is putting her weight behind some of the most constructive social activities in the city. And her advice for professionals is especially valuable. “The balance between ordinary and extraordinary self is a key aspect. When you are full of your achievements and have a bloated ego, it is vital to remember that you are pretty ordinary. And when you are taking it easy and not pushing yourself, it is essential to remind yourself that you are extraordinary."

The one element common to all the success stories is that most of these women were ambitious from the very beginning, having an excellent academic track record and a focussed, single-minded approach to their careers. Most of them had extremely supportive parents who had big dreams for them. Importantly, the one aspect that comes across is the strong value system ingrained in them, where they were able to look at the collective good of people. Not surprisingly each one has been a terrific team player continuing to encourage and inspire others.

They all entered their fields in the 70s when most companies did not even hire women as a policy. But these achievers attest to the fact that there was no great gender bias once they got reasonably settled into their field of work. Invariably each one of them had the backing of a male mentor who proved decisive in their career growth.

It's also vital to consider that these high achievers suffered some form of personal loss or the other, and it brought in its wake a great deal of pain and anguish. But importantly, they showed the courage to rise above it and recogonise the larger roles they could play in their professional sphere. Kalpana Morparia, CEO J P Morgan says she found it difficult to recoincile with her childless state and until very long considered herself to be failure. That's when she resolved to flip that loss on its head and use it to her advantage instead, wherein she single-mindedly applied herself to her career.
There are many such inspirations to be drawn from.

But one thing to consider about the women featured is that most of them have been heirs to big business empires or had influential parents who guided them correctly and funded their education abroad. Not that their achievements are less commendable, but the stories may not resonate as well as one would have liked. Just to make sure all fields get a representation, there's PT Usha and Shubha Mudgal added to the mix. One gets the feeling that the author could have been far more eclectic in her choices of women. As it stands, the narrative gets into a familiar loop with familiar themes and words floating around. Each story should have been more distinctive in order to engage the reader fully.

The book nevertheless is sincere in intent, and its approach of citing specific examples where these women applied their talent and innovation will go some way in showing how much women can be productive in the professional and public arena.


'Women bring an emotional quotient to their dealings'

Journalist Sudha Menon's book Leading Ladies profiles 15 successful Indian women who've made a real difference in the professional world, and through them tries to understand the realms of the possible



The idea for Leading Ladies, a non-fictional book featuring some of the country's most successful women in varied fields, lingered with Sudha long before she actually got down to writing it. As a business journalist, she had followed the corporate world from close quarters and it inspired her to see so many 'can-do' career women with stunning success stories. “I was keen to find out what made them tick,” says Sudha about the book-idea that had been “rattling in her head” for a while.

It wasn't easy to give up a secure full time journalism job that she had been pursuing for the last 20 years. “But there was a restlessness in me. I had grown up in a house where there were books everywhere. I had finished reading all the Russian classics by the time I was eight or nine. I loved words. In that sense, though I enjoyed my work as a business journalist too, it was all facts and figures which does tend to get repetitive after a while. And since this topic inspired me for a book, I resolved that I would have to take the plunge,” she says. It of course meant altering her approach and style and fully donning the writer's cap. “As a journalist you are objective and cut and dry. This was a different project altogether where I wanted these highly talented women to open up their hearts to me. I wanted to tap into their real selves, and know more about them than what one has read in countless magazines,” she says.

Sudha listed down 100 super-successful women but soon realised she would not be able to do them justice in one book. Finally, she settled on 15 names, and some care was taken to include women from the arts fields as well. But primarily, the book concerns itself with women business executives and entrepreneurs. This makes her list far less eclectic, but Sudha says she was hesitant to include women from fields she didn't have an assured knowledge of. Leading Ladies has many of the names one would expect. It has Thermax ex chairperson and social worker Anu Agha, social activist, her daughter and current head, Meher Pudumjee, classical danseuse Mallika Sarabhai, Naina Kidwai, and Lila Poonawala. There are other leading business women and CEOs like Kalpana Morparia, Shikha Sharma, Shireen Mistry (Teach For India campaign), Vinita Bali, Kiran Muzumdar, Mallika Srinivasan. Priya Paul, and Amrita Patel that the book covers. From the sports world, it has P T Usha and from the music world, classical singer, Subha Mudgal. Their obvious professional success apart, most of these women have leveraged their positions to make a real difference in their respective fields. Almost all of them have either begun or nurtured organisations that contribute to the larger good of their community.

Most of the women Sudha featured were only known to her through their work, but her process of finding out more through her book, proved to be a personal journey of self-discovery as well. “I had a lot of self-confidence issues. I feared I wouldn't be able to capture all the aspects about these women. But each time I met them, their confidence and energy started to rub off on me. They were generous with their time and I noticed they bring a certain emotional quotient to their dealings, a heart into an other hard-nosed world that makes them sensitive and effective leaders,” she says.

Since much has already been covered in the mainstream media about these women, Sudha deliberately chose not to create biographies and instead pitch it as an inspirational book. “When you feel low, you can just leaf through it and it has enough to give you hope and uplift your spirits.”
Sudha is already planning for a Vol 2 which will feature women from a variety of fields. Besides that, she is also going to release her fiction work soon. “Yes, the writing bug has bitten me now,” she smiles.

- Sandhya Iyer

The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay

Author: Siddharth Dhanvant Shaghvi
Pages: 348
Published in: 2010



Somewhere towards the middle of Siddharth Shanghvi's overwritten second novel, one of his characters bitches about a fictitious Indian author saying so and so's book is self-conscious, lurid and seems "like a creative writing workshop on an overdrive."
Surprising that such a sentence would land up in Shanghvi’s own book, lyrically titled, The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay, because nothing can more aptly describe his own florid language.
Even someone who might usually appreciate the high-flown language found in classics, will find the writing here overly decorative and cumbersome. The first few pages are especially hard to get by as the showiness and smug nonchalance of the writing starts to revolt you.

It's not like Shanghvi cannot write. He has a falicity with words, and has perhaps used up half the dictionary, but this excessiveness serves an early blow to the narrative because you're so turned off.

Firstly, the creative writer in Shanghvi is painfully self-indulgent.
He writers: “On Tuesday morning a big fat sun careened through thick layers of cloud, revealing a sky the colour of joy. The same evening, on the bust to Samar’s house, Karan saw the prairie-blue sly darken , opalescent grey turning to leaden silver”

Even banal sentences are stilted.

“In front of the portal, under a big rain tree, liveried chauffeurs traded flashes of filthy gossip about their bosses, and the tipsy memsahibs, smelling of their husbands abandonment, waited for valets to pull up their fancy cars.”

The metaphors are frequently tasteless and meant to shock: “Priya had a crusty librarian’s voice, one that could only be relieved with a dildo”
The sexed up language by itself is not a problem, but the phrases seem to appear out of nowhere

All this should be enough to dump the book, right? To be fair, the novel does gather some steam and good-will by the end of the second chapter. You start to invest in some of the characters, the language begins to compliment the narrative rather than stick out like a sore thumb, and this is where you can appreciate the author’s ability to enter the inner most recesses of his character’s hearts and articulate their emotions so well. Many passages are moving and insightful, as much as they are lyrical and apt.
The title suggests the book would be about Bombay – all that is stands for, what it has lost and so on. But no among of evoking places and people of the city brings about a resonance.

However, as a story about three people, Samar, Karan and Rhea – on different journeys, all of whom violently fall in love for different reasons and are torn apart by their own confused states and stations in life, the novel holds quite well. The Rhea-Karan relationship rings true, and some of the scenes involving this tortured, tumultuous married women- single man affair is genuinely captivating.
Shanghvi successfully brings out the many shades of love, its changeability and conflicts to the fore. And he anchors this around the Jessica Lal murder case, where the central characters are directly and indirectly involved in it.
Shanghvi’s strength lies in characterization and he etches out a human drama looking at all sides of story and the compulsions that drive its numerous players.
The resolution is not as powerful and the characters start getting hazier by the end, so your interest in them steadily starts to wane.
The book then is a mixed bag – many lows, many highs.



Brief chat with Siddharth Shanghvi



The author was in the city last week at Crossword to release the paperback edition of the novel and I did take the opportunity to ask him about some adverse reactions his book generated when it released earlier this year. "Not some, there were many negative reviews," he corrects, as he picks up another book to sign. Did it bother him? The author merely gesticulates that he didn't care. His life and education in England could have also influenced to the way he wrote, he admits.

At the event were also present Childrens' author Sonja Chanradhud and Anjali Joseph, author of the recent Saraswati Park. The Lost Flemingoes of Bombay uses several real-life incidences and people as fictionalised parallels. The Jessica Lal murder case is at its core. Joseph's question was related to 'transmuting' real life into art. She observed how fiction has always been considered a 'precious zone' and our real lives are not supposed to be the stuff of art. Shanghvi answered that he chose the subject because it was the only reality he could understand. "I needed to understand this climate that allows a politician's son to get away with killing someone for a banal reason like turning down someone's demand for a drink. The upside is that with enough amount of noise and media working with you, you can make a difference," says the author, who contributed to the case by the way of newspaper columns he wrote around that time.
The other aspect about the novel is its undercurrent of sexuality. "I was offered a scholarship abroad to study Sex. My parents objected, and I didn't end up going. But it gets sublimated in my novels. I believe sexuality has a profound impact on how you negotiate your roles in the world," he explains.
Shanghvi has written two novels, the earlier one being The Last Song of Dusk, but the author is ready to give up writing. "Something organic and magical seems to get lost for me in the process of exhibiting. I will continue with what I do, but the instrument will change. But it would really depend on the story and my mood," he says with an air of nonchalance.

Author: RamchandraGuha
Pages: 537
Price: 799
Year of Publishing: 2010



Historian, author and columnist Ramchandra Guha’s recently published book, Makers of Modern India is a sincere effort at profiling some of India’s most prolific thinkers and doers, whose ideas have had a defining influence in the shaping of our republic. The book – through speeches, articles and essays by these great personalities – tracks Indian’s political, social and cultural history over the last two centuries, giving the reader a comprehensive idea of how the country has come to evolve.
In a detailed introduction, Guha talks about how political activism has mostly gone hand in hand with theoretical reflection in our country, and most of its greatest thinkers have all been in the thick of political action. This is of course not unique to India. But one of the reasons that makes the compilation of such a book a worthwhile exercise is because many of those ideas remain relevant to present day India, says Guha.
Among the 19 individuals chosen by the author, there are the obvious names of course. But on first glance, there are several others who seem to be missing from the list. In the introduction, the author explains his choices clearly. Two iconic leaders of Indian national struggle, Vallabhhai Patel and Subhash Chandra Bose are not included, and Guha says this was owning to the paucity of original ideas contained in their published works and because both were ‘out and out doers’. The others missing are either because their ‘influenced has passed’ with age or because their ideas didn’t extend far beyond a certain class. The Indian Marxist finds no representation and Guha explains why -- their work has been derivative and no novel contributions have been made to the ideas of Mao and Lenin.
So the men and women who Guha handpicks are not all of the same stature, and some of them are little known, but altogether, the book covers a great deal and thoroughly represents India through its many stages and movements. While the book comprehensively looks into and dedicates several pages to its two greatest national leaders, Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, it also brings to focus thinkers like Hamid Dalwai, Tarabai Shinde and some others who got unjustly forgotten.
Guha introduces every personality at the beginning of a chapter, before reproducing excerpts of their speeches and essays. Many of the themes do find a resonance to the times we live in. Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s explosive speeches talk about why it is imperative for Indian Muslims to have a separate Pakistan. “Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs and literature….they have different epics, different heroes and different episodes. Very often the hero of one is a foe of the other and likewise, their victories and defeats overlap.”
Some of the most insightful thoughts come from C Rajagopalachari, first attorney general of India and CM of Tamil Nadu. His essays talk about the acute need for a strong Opposition to make parliamentary democracy effective. This was the time when Congress party was enjoying an unrivalled reign in the 50s and 60s. He also debates with much acuity on why English, and not Hindi, must be the national language.
All these themes are bound to touch a chord among today’s readers. At 537 pages, the book is a valuable addition to the repertoire of non-fiction writing in India.

Leela - A Patchwork Life

Pages: 180
Price: Rs 450
Publishers: Penguin Vikings


The faintest memory one has of Leela Naidu is that of Anuradha, the haunting, virginal beauty in Hrishikesh Mukherjee's 1960s film with Balraj Sahni. There were a few more fleeting appearances from her on the screen, but by and large, she remained a figure known only to a close circle of friends in Mumbai, where she stayed till her death earlier this year.


Leela - A Patchwork Life is an autobiographical book, that captures some of highlights of her life - and there were many. She died before the book was published a few months back. She was 69. The multi-lingual, multi-cultural Leela was one of the most well-traveled, well-read people of her times, and French launguage in particular was ingrained into her system.


Born to an physicist Indian father and a French-journalist mother, Leela was thrown in the company of illustrious men and women very early on. Hindi films were incidental to her life. She acted in a few films, got married into a rich industrial family (Oberois), delivered twins, got divorced, married poet/writer Dom Moraes and stayed together for 25 years, until they separated. However, none of the personal tragedies in her life find a place in the book. In her prologue, she enumerates the incidences in just one sentence, but it unmistakably carries the weight of memory. 'I do not see what use it would be to recount my 'trials and tribulations', except to add to yet another narrative of feminine pain to the ones that are already extant."

If that was all there was to Leela's life - which she anyway didn't wish to talk about -- the exercise would seem pointless. If the book is still so readable it's because the memoir teems with wonderful anecdotes from a bygone era, where she came in close contact with some great luminaries of her time. Her parents were fairly influential in their fields, and Leela was privi to many of these personalities visiting her home from time to time. She remembers filmmaker Roberto Rossellini loving her mom's cooking and when Leela goes to Paris for a certain medical reason, she has his wife and legendary actress Ingrid Bergman for company. In one of the most interesting chapters of her life, she forms a close association with new wave director Jean Renoir, who teaches her some vital aspects of acting. In one of the episodes, she describes how Renoir got her to read a particular scene and led her through a series of exercises in what he described as the 'ifness' of the play. What if the character was such and such? The text was merely to be the framework and each interpretation could bring something new to that framework...




Obviously, her exposure to world cinema and her interactions with the masters had a bearing when she acted in films later on. In what is perhaps the most interesting segment of the book, Leela describes her working relationship with Ismail Merchant and James Ivory who made The Householder with her and Sashi Kapoor. Someone senior sees the clippings of the film and praises Leela for her good use of her toes in a scene where she is angry and on a hunger-strike. Leela had not noticed it at all. "I believe that if you know what one part of your body is doing, or you're planning what your eyebrows are going to do, you're not acting, you're modelling," she views.

Once Leela approaches her teens, her luminous beauty is noticed by all. Raj Kapoor who she is told has the 'regretable tendency of falling in love with his leading ladies', is struck by her good looks and offers her a four year contract. Leela says she was never very keen on films. Yet, she accepts Hrishikesh Mukherjee's Anuradha and describes the experience as pleasant. She seems to have shared a bitter-sweet equation with co-star Balraj Sahni. She says he lend his gravitas to many films that didn't deserve it, and then goes on to tell us that for all his gentlemanliness, Sahni was not above 'trying his luck with her' The other high point was when Vogue mazagine listed as one of the five most beautiful woman in the world.

Leela's inherent delicacy of speech and elegance prevents her from ever turning vitriolic towards any known figure, but she nevertheless gets across her point, either saying it plainly or then employing clever sarcasm. The latter she uses for her husband Dom Moraes (not being able to resist calling him 'morose'), who was also her childhood friend. Leela talks about how she was his unpaid secretary for years, taking down notes for him and interpreting his 'mumbling questions' as he interviewed high-profile personalities all around the globe. One of them happened to be Indira Gandhi, who kept giving them monosyllabic answers.

The first half of the book is made interesting only because of some the famous interactions she had, otherwise Leela's language often tends to get stilted and there is the appearance of some dainty posturing as well. One theme that is repeated episode after episode is Leela's good Samaritan acts. So either she is fighting for the rights of the 'extras' on the film sets, or taking up some racism issue. Leela's concerns may well be genuine, and that is plausible given how she went on to make documentaries on a variety of socially relevant subjects later on, but her self-projection as a do-gooder gets tedious to read after a point. Leela presents herself in no better than in the best light possible always, which makes the memoir seem quite imbalanced.

But the book grows on you and Leela has many valuable insights to share along the way. Her observations of Indian film units - make-up men keeping their shoes in the same trunk which contains the cosmetics - or Leela finding her expensive clothes being returned in shabby condition after use - point at their callous disregard for others. "The film industry and I never understood each other," she writes finally.


The writing has its moments, and at 180 pages, the  book never overstays its welcome. The book was narrated orally to writer Jerry Pinto. People who know Pinto believe that there is a definite shadow of him in the writing. It seems very likely he anchored the material. But what you get in the end is an engaging book that takes you back in time and entrances you with the scents and smells of an antiquated time.

Somerset Maugham A Writer's Notebook

Most of us who grow up with the vague idea of becoming writers sometime in the future or at least putting what one reads to good use professionally will admit to have maintained a note book. I, for one, have. And since I rarely revisit a book for a second time, and since my own retention powers are so woefully limited, I rely either on making markings -underlining the text or then often diligently jotting it down in pretty notebooks. If employed with discretion and intelligence, as Maugham would say, the habit is not without profit.

Somerset Maugham's The Writer's Notebook is a collection of his thoughts, observations, ideas that he gathered along his prolific writing career that lasted over 50 years. The author kept a notebook and would scribble away anything that caught his fancy as he travelled far and wide and met a great deal of characters (one calls them 'characters' and not 'people' because Maugham always saw them as such and was otherwise quite a loner in real life.) It's a practise he started when he was all of 19, and kept updating it till he was well over 70 years. Maugham explains that it was not vanity that prompted him to publish his private notebook, instead it was born out of the thought that he himself would have been thrilled if a well-known writer had came out with such an edition while he was embarking on a writing career.

But when Maugham actually made the notes, it was with the idea of putting the material to future use. So what you find are several brief descriptions of characters and places, and reflections on life, art and human character. I must confess I didn't read everything in the book and though I glanced every single page, I rested my eyes and got immersed only on topics that I was inclined to read about. It's rightly a book that is usually found as a supplementary part of Maugham's stunning autobiography, The Summing Up, because there is an expected resonance in both works.

The parts which caught my eye were about Russian literature, which Maugham doesn't have very complimentary things to say about. Because the collective body of Russian literature is so small, Russians know it with a great thoroughness, he piquently observes. Maugham is a bit bewildered at its over-estimation all over Europe, and believes Russian literature to suffer severely in the area of characterisation. He notes that even someone like Dostoevsky -who has other strengths - has all his characters as 'all of one piece' and as personifications. He says, "It is humour which discerns the infinite diversity of human beings, and if Russian novels offer only a restricted variety of types it is perhaps because they are singularly lacking in humour. In Russian literature you will look in vain for wit and repartee, badinage, the rapier thrust of sarcasm, the intellectual refreshment of the epigram, or the lighthearted jest. Its irony is coarse and obvious."

The other insight is on 'irrationality' in characterisation. Maugham says that though man is fundamentally not a rational animal, he/she feels dissatisfied when the persons of a story do not act from motives that we accept as sufficient. He references Othello in this regard, terming how all of Shakespere's characters in this play were highly irrational. Critics have of course tried to justify their motives, but Maugham sees it as a futile exercise. "The critics would have done better to accept the play as a grand example of the fundamental irrationality of man."

There are other observations of the 'value' of art, the purpose of life and many such philosophical musings. The book in many ways points at the evolving of a writer, through his insatiable need to travel, meet new people, be exposed to new sensations and finally give expression to it in his books. Insightful, stimulating and bristling with original ideas, The Writer's Notebook is a terrific treasure trove that takes you into the rich and ever-curious mind of Maugham who considered every thing he saw as material for his writings. His invention, imagination and sense of narrative drama did the rest!